Flasz On Film

The original John Krasinski-directed A Quiet Place, which opened in 2018, is an intriguing case, as it succeeded almost exclusively on the back of its central gimmick of both building suspenseful action scenes in complete silence and capitalizing viscerally on diegetic jump scares. It was such an immersive experience that audiences refrained from munching on snacks, leaving their nacho plates and buckets of popcorn completely untouched, partly out of fear of reprisals from other filmgoers who wished to have their experience uninterrupted by sounds of people masticating their well-expensive concessions, and out of a sheer desire to remain fully invested in the film.

This phenomenon successfully camouflaged the simple and undeniable reality that A Quiet Place was not necessarily a good movie to begin with. Written around simple concepts and fleshed out using almost exclusively a language of visual shorthand and cliche that would make both Michael Bay and Robert Zemeckis nod with appreciation, the movie was just a shallow rollercoaster ride. And it’s totally fine, by the way.

However, the minute this inarguably flimsy narrative construct was decided to be used as a framework upon which not only a sequel but an entire franchise reliant on tangential world-building would have to rest, I instinctively felt we may quickly run into such trivial problems as—you know—immediately having to scrape the bottom of the barrel for new ideas to fill the movies with and having to rely on retreating into the comfort zone of what worked exceedingly well before.

This is where we are now. While A Quiet Place: Day One technically breaks out into the open plains of world-building, as it leaves the family drama of the previous two films in the series to one side and explores how an invasion of seemingly indestructible alien monsters with exceptional hearing unfolded in its initial minutes, hours and days, it still happily retraces steps we intimately know without necessarily adding too much novelty to the experience. In fact, despite the movie taking place during the first day of this alien invasion, we may feel as though we were experts on the matter. After all, we have seen two films on the subject and we know exactly what draws attention of these brutally dangerous alien creatures, how to avoid their gaze and more importantly how to kill them; meanwhile, the characters in this film have yet to catch up. They’re new to this, which introduces what looks like an interesting dynamic between the audience and the spectacle. We know what the rollercoaster will entail. The people involved in the story have no idea.

Therefore, watching A Quiet Place: Day One is at the very least an odd experience because we spend a lot of time in anticipation of what we already know is going to happen and our suspense is closely matched by our own impotent frustration at the naivety and blissful ignorance of the characters who have yet to learn how to keep quiet and survive the movie in the first place. We know fountains and waterfalls are safe spaces. We understand that crowds of people, all walking in silence, still generate enough noise to become vulnerable to swift attack. We are aware of how to stay safe and what the characters need to learn because we have seen it all before. And even the most blood-curdling rollercoaster can lose its lustre and effectiveness. You only need to ride it a few times to get used to it.

What we are left with are characters, so we get to latch onto the shoulder of Sam (Lupita Nyong’o), a woman suffering from a terminal form of cancer, who is caught in the middle of the alien invasion—together with her ostensibly well-trained service cat, the true MVP of the movie—while on a trip to New York City together with her hospice group. She teams up with Eric (Joseph Quinn), an English student who finds himself with nowhere else to go when the world goes to hell and they both make their way through what quickly turns into ruins of The Big Apple, hoping to board a ferry to safety. Because we know those dumbo aliens are not too fond of water.

But we don’t get to learn much more than that. This entire attempt at world-building and expanding the lore surrounding what otherwise looks like an execution of a simple template with an incredibly immersive gimmick underpinning its existence just falls a bit short of expectations. Sure, we get to see what happens when those incredibly lethal creatures make landfall in a place filled with people and extraneous noises (the movie itself reminds us that New York generates a background noise level equivalent to constant, uninterrupted scream north of 90 dB), but the filmmaker (Michael Sarnoski, who previously directed Pig) refuses to engage with the world any further. In contrast to, say, Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later which became known for its use of eerie atmosphere courtesy of filming the centre of London completely deserted, A Quiet Place: Day One doesn’t go far enough to use this idea with any appreciable effect. And when it does, we rarely get more than a few seconds to take it in. After all, we are on a rollercoaster and once the ride starts, it goes. No pauses.

Equally, the film doesn’t develop any substantial interest in exploring or adding to the lore surrounding the aliens themselves and for the most part relies on executing on stuff we are already intimately familiar with. Think about how Aliens expands on the incredibly simple yet intriguing premise of the Xenomorph, contributes new layers of interest and facilitates the very idea of a universe crystallizing around this series. Again, very little to show for here. Because, once more, it’s a rollercoaster… which we have been on twice already.

Consequently, this movie is weirdly positioned to appeal only to those filmgoers who maybe haven’t seen the original two movies and for whom this rollercoaster may be fresh enough to evoke a visceral response. But then again, how many such people are there? Well, judging by the combined box office of the two preceding movies, there is a good enough contingent of viewers who have either chosen not to watch these movies at all or have not been made aware of their existence, but equally, A Quiet Place: Day One is not necessarily designed to work with newcomers that well. It is built on the premise we already know what’s going on. But at the same time, it doesn’t do anything to entice us. So, who is it for?

I suppose, just as there is a sub-demographic of rollercoaster fanatics who simply enjoy going on the same ride multiple times and geek out on the minute differences between experiencing broadly similar things under only vaguely different conditions, there is going to be a subset of fans of the series who look forward to this experience and will enjoy the silence-based scares and the scaled-up mayhem of the movie, while latching onto very simplistic character work courtesy of the film’s central players. But I think it’s safe to say that the magic is mostly gone for other folks.

Nobody buys popcorn to see this movie anymore. Everyone knows it’s a waste of money because everyone knows what to expect. In fact, completely anecdotally, this third instalment in the series was so insufficiently unengaging that it didn’t dissuade some viewers in my screening from constantly talking or frequently lighting up their phones like Christmas trees. I think it’s safe to say that with A Quiet Place: Day One the magic of the series has been permanently extinguished and the movie is nothing more than a well-worn rollercoaster ride in a theme park which we are comfortable enough to navigate without a map.